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Turkey

The covers of the nine books featured in the list: Suee and the Strange White Light, The House...
World Kid Lit Month: Read Around Asia
By Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, Kelly Zhang & Hongyu Jasmine Zhu
This World Kid Lit Month, join us for a tour of Asia with the best of translated Asian literature for young people, including picture books, middle-grade and YA fiction, and graphic novels.
The covers of the books featured in the August Watchlist: The Details, Lojman, Wenling's, A Practical...
The Watchlist: August 2023
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends new and exciting reads from Angola, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey.
black and white drawing of a boy with smoke coming up behind him floating over a red mound
Julia Griffin, "Smoke." Copyright Julia Griffin
Three Poems
By Imran Sada’i
I sit on the shores of emptiness / and watch my soul foaming red
Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman
MultimediaMultilingual
The covers of the books featured in the list
Your #IWD2023 Reading List
By Words Without Borders
In honor of International Women’s Day 2023, WWB recommends 10 forthcoming books written and translated by women and published by small presses.
Portrait of writer Deniz Dağdelen Düzgün
The City and the Writer: In Izmir with Deniz Dağdelen Düzgün
By Nathalie Handal
The thing that surprises me the most is that parchment paper was invented in Izmir.
A dark room where only a small sliver of window lets in any light
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
A Friendly Face
By Sevgi Soysal
Just what she needed. An outing with a man just released from prison.
Translated from Turkish by Maureen Freely
PEN International Celebrates 100 Years
By Joanne Leedom-Ackerman
PEN members today not only gather for literary events in their home countries and internationally but also defend writers and the freedom to write worldwide.
Tribades
By Nazlı Karabıyıkoğlu
Whatever you do in Turkey, you do it alone.
Translated from Turkish by Ralph Hubbell
Elfiye
By Nazlı Karabıyıkoğlu
They looked at me like I was sick.
Translated from Turkish by Ralph Hubbell
Peripatetics: The Essays of Jazmina Barrera, Karen Villeda, and Mariana Oliver
By Charlotte Whittle
These are essays with a roving gaze whose authors travel through geographic and intellectual spaces with the same ease with which we used to walk around in New York.
Özdamar’s Tongue
By Mariana Oliver
Özdamar knew that arriving in a country with no return ticket meant voluntarily surrendering to an indeterminate foreignness.
Translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches
The Desire to Travel Responsibly Must Come before the Desire to Learn through Literature
By Tomaso Biancardi
There is a surer way for international literature to make us better tourists.
The Importance of Stories in an Era of Division
By Elliot Ackerman
With much of our world deeply divided, stories such as these become more essential than ever to ease our collective pessimism.
Muzaffer and Bananas
By Yalçın Tosun
We were both quite fat, but Ali’s body carried more promise than mine.
Translated from Turkish by Abby Comstock-Gay
The Canary
By Deniz Tarsus
Every night before they went to sleep, the people of the village imagined their own deaths.
Translated from Turkish by Ayça Türkoğlu
All the Streets of the City
By Behçet Çelik
“From here on out it’s rooftop to rooftop, hocam.”
Translated from Turkish by Abby Comstock-Gay
The Terrorist Upstairs
By Emrah Serbes
I’m twelve years old, I won’t have to do a lot of time, I’ll be out before you know it.
Translated from Turkish by Abigail Bowman
Garine
By Karin Karakasli
“Erzurum is a wound I carry inside me.”
Translated from Turkish by Ayça Türkoğlu
The Little Bathroom
By Sine Ergün
Did she or her housemates know about the secret of the bathroom?
Translated from Turkish by Ayça Türkoğlu
“It’s Us and Them”: Writing from and about Divided Countries
By Susan Harris
In the current environment of relentless political strife . . . debate deteriorates into name-calling; partisans morph into zealots, complex issues are reduced to binary terms, and hostility seethes just beneath the surface.
The Angels Who Wiped My Fate Clean
By Kemal Varol
I was bound. I was a registered piece of inventory. I was a liability. I wasn’t going anywhere.
Translated from Turkish by Dayla Rogers
And What If Love Is Stronger? The Queer Issue
By Susan Harris
In this troubling context, the need for portrayals of queer lives around the world becomes even more urgent.
June 2017 Queer Where Are You My Love Beldan Sezen Feature
Where Are You, My Love?
By Beldan Sezen
© 2017 Beldan Sezen. Translation of the text © 2017 Charlotte Collins. Translation of the signs and newspaper headlines © 2017 Canan Marasligil. All rights reserved.
Translated from German by Charlotte Collins & Canan Marasligil
Multimedia
The Minibus
By Naz Tansel
What do you want us to do, sit on their heads?
Translated by Canan Marasligil
An Endless Green Line
By Gianluca Costantini & Elettra Stamboulis
Every town had two soccer teams. A right-wing one and a left-wing one.
Translated from Italian by Jamie Richards
Comics and Graphic Narratives: A Global Cultural Commons
By Dominic Davies
Comics themselves have a role to play in the construction of a more globally aware social consciousness.
The Gold Watch
By Mely Kiyak
''The clock inside has no numbers, it has only memories.''
Translated from German by Rebecca Heier
from “The Lost Lands of Paradise”
By Yavuz Ekinci
Aram's mutilated body on that tree had grown larger and larger in my mind.
Translated from Turkish by Kardelen Kala
Omaira
By Murathan Mungan
You had no name when we met / we did not notice it wasn’t there
Translated from Turkish by Aron Aji & David Gramling
Multilingual
Breaking the Taboo: Turkish Writers Face the Kurdish Past
By Alber Sabanoglu
We were forced by the state itself to take sides.
Mirror Shock
By Murat Özyasar
If you look in the mirror too long it hits you.
Translated from Turkish by Hardy Griffin
The Nights Passing Endlessly through Scheherazade’s Mouth
By Exmetjan Osman
I was more or less enjoying the daytime / I was watching grass sprout from cracks in the asphalt
Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman
Multilingual
To the Islands
By Alber Sabanoglu
Under her feet, the boat was shaking and creaking as bigger, stronger waves were beginning to hit it.
Translated from Turkish by the author
Multilingual
Desert Lights
By Murathan Mungan
Before winter arrives you must / hire a handsome assassin
Translated from Turkish by Aron Aji
The Waiter
By Sait Faik Abasiyanik
There, in a corner of the deck over the water, she sits like a ghost, facing away from the sea, silently smoking her cigarette.
Translated from Turkish by Aron Aji
Selam Berlin
By Yadé Kara
It all began on a Thursday evening in November 1989. From that night on, things would never again be the same.
Translated from German by Tim Mohr
The Knowledge Holder Doesn’t Choke on Cleverness
By Feridun Zaimoglu
Who taught child's heart cruelty? How were you lured to the poison dish?
Translated from German by Kristin Dickinson, Robin Ellis & Priscilla Layne
Green Card
By Petros Markaris
He was wearing a pair of threadbare jeans and a checked shirt. There was a cardboard sign hanging round his neck.
Translated from Greek by David Connolly
For Years
By Zafer Köse
The hospital odors do not offend anymore.
Translated from Turkish by Candan Baysan
In Conversation
By Claire Messud
Buket Uzuner: I met Claire Messud in Istanbul in November 2007 while she was visiting the city as one of the guest writers of the Istanbul Book Fair. A week before I met her, I started to read her very…
Coffee Grinds
By Seyhan Erözçelik
People hold hands . . . this one in front, the other by the feet, the other by and by, a tower of people toward the sky.
Translated from Turkish by Murat Nemet-Nejat
An illustration of a girl in a red and white tutu standing on the back of a white horse in front...
Popular Graphic Arts, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Tante Rosa, Would-be Horse Acrobat
By Sevgi Soysal
Rosa would no longer be falling off of horses. Instead, she would bag the manure of the circus animals and sell it to villagers.
Translated from Turkish by Amy Spangler
Door
By Birhan Keskin
Pass through me, I'll remain, I'll wait, pass through me, / but where you pass through me I cannot know.
Translated from Turkish by George Messo
The Train
By Murathan Mungan
We carry within us the greatest secret in life.
Translated from Turkish by Ruth Christie
The Hidden Me
By Murathan Mungan
Here is the photograph. It was taken on the day my father came out of the Diyarbakır Prison.
Translated from Turkish by Ruth Christie
Sacrifice
By Küçük Iskender
left and right cigarettes lit, burnt out / each drag starts with my love,
Translated from Turkish by Murat Nemet-Nejat
From “Harbinger”
By Müge Iplikçi
from the very beginning some people said that it was a disorder.
Translated from Turkish by Esen Köybaşi
The Prisoner
By Asli Erdogan
She woke up long before the alarm.
Translated from Turkish by Deniz Perin
Tunnel
By Birhan Keskin
The roads I walked didn't tire me,
Translated from Turkish by George Messo
Water
By Birhan Keskin
I won't talk anymore, I won't say harsh words in the morning for a dream I embroider a flower of pearl on my bosom.
Translated from Turkish by George Messo
Story of an Island
By Yaşar Kemal
And in the desert between the two rivers the battle which had been going on for many days continued.
Translated from Turkish by Angela Roome
From “Black Sky, Black Sea”
By Izzet Celasin
Here and in many other places, İstanbul was preparing for the May Day rallies.
Translated from Norwegian by Kari Dickson
Multilingual
From “City in Crimson Cloak”
By Asli Erdogan
A huge army clad in black suddenly spreads over the horizon; it approaches at a gallop, full speed, and attacks just like that, without warning.
Translated from Turkish by Amy Spangler
Offering II
By Ece Temelkuran
You are water. / You are afraid of and for the stones you will strike as you flow.
Translated from Turkish by Deniz Perin
House of the Edge
By Ece Temelkuran
Purify your tongue and all you’ve seen / Gather your illuminated words onto snow white paper
Translated from Turkish by Deniz Perin
Seven Aches
By Ece Temelkuran
After grasping the games and their rules / The fatigue of participation becomes less and less bearable.
Translated from Turkish by Deniz Perin
From “Leyla”
By Feridun Zaimoglu
Heaven rains down bread in little hard crumbs of dough, and whoever catches them may either become happy or choke on them.
Translated from German by Margot Bettauer Dembo
Time and Illusion
By Bejan Matur
Flying into the field of cloudsWith the taste of sun and waterThere is no night out thereNight does not fall in the distanceA silver cage around my neckLike an unfaithful concubineI lay down and curled…
Translated from Turkish by Suat Karantay
Fragments from “Real Life for the Last Scene of a Movie”
By Sebnem Isiguzel
We had to walk. This necessity made me happy. I hadn't been this happy for a long while, I thought.
Translated from Turkish by Suat Karantay
Courage Does Not Reign
By Perihan Magden
I do not know what to say to you, said the director. Therefore I shall say nothing.
Translated from Turkish by Alin Ince